ABSTRACT
The Babri Masjid dispute in Ayodhya, India became the flash point for tension between the Hindu and Muslim communities in the early 1990s. A movement to build a temple at the site of the sixteenth century Moghul mosque was spearheaded by Hindu religious and nationalist groups, which argued that the mosque itself had been erected on top of a destroyed temple at the site of Lord Rama's birthplace. Hindu fanatics demolished the mosque on 6 December 1992, in an act that the government did little to prevent. This incident, and the riots and Bombay bomb blasts that followed, led to a general deterioration of communal relations. Growing religious and community polarization coincided with the rise of the Bharatiya fanata Party, a Hindu nationalist political party that in 1998 formed the government after a strong electoral finish.
This essay was written in early 1990, before the mosque's destruction. But in a climate of worsening conflict, the issues raised about ‘religiosity’ and 'spirituality’ are as important as ever. Published in the Altran Monthly (Vol. 11, No. 5, 1991), it is an attempt to elucidate two diametrically different worldviews in the light of Ayodhya.
